A Challenge
by Nomia
Summary: Thoughts of hatred, revelations of love, and a mutual understanding, (with a good snog, of course,) all in one late night in the Common Room. Teenage life. woot. MWPP era just for you! one-shot r


There are very few things that are entirly infuriating in this world. It is only by the magnetic pull I seem to have on luck that the most arrogent, annoying, cocky, and absolutly, completely, and totally aggravating little prat – as well as his equally stupid friends – have been forcefully shoved into my everyday life, and there is _nothing I can do about it!_ Oh, I've _tried,_ of course, Merlin knows I've tried, but it can't be done! There is nothing upon this earth, magic or no, that has the power to withstand the incredible stupidity he has the ability to emit each and every day.

He calls his attraction to me a curse; I do, too. The ferocity at which he approaches me every waking moment is exhasting and stretching me far beyond the limit of my wits. It is only the duty and responsibility I know I hold as Head Girl that refrains me from extracting what little brains Mr. James Potter has left with salad tongs.

"I can't _stand _it anymore!" My last comment, not ment to be shouted aloud, frightened several second years as they walked past my table in the common room on their way to the dormitories. I contemplated whether or not calling after them the reason for my outburst would only increase the veiw of lunicy they held over me. Either way, they had already scrambled up the stairs, throwing back amply terrified looks. I buried my face in my arms and shouted unintelligible curses to James's sorry arse.

"I suppose it's a bad time to ask for help on my Charm's homework…" I didn't look up at the speaker as I shouted, "Aren't we the clever one. Sod off!"

"Oh, come now, Lily," the soft voice said again, putting a consoling hand on my shoulder and sitting in the armchair across the table from me. "I'm sure whatever James has done this time can't have amounted to much worse than the past."

I sighed heavily and shifted to rest my chin in the palm of my left hand, better allowing Remus to see the melodramatic state I had set my face in. "No, it's simply the collective horrers catching up with me." Sighing loudly again and sitting up straight to allow more air into my diaphram to complain all the better, I groaned, "What on earth causes that boy to be so irksome! You might think putting such drive into something productive – no, that would be too smart for him to figure out on his own… I'm afraid we're his last hope, Remus; you put the Imperious Curse over him and I'll take it from there."

Remus coughed into his hand a bit too lightly to account as a real one. After several more near-coughs, he was able to maintain a straigh face to say, "We're barely-seventeen-year-old boys; what do you expect us to do when we see a pretty face?"

I slumped back into my hand. "Glom for a while and then move on." Remus shook his head.

"It's a challenge to him," he said. I sat up, repulsed and all the more infuriated. Quickly, Remus explained, "James doesn't back down from things, especially if it's something that means a lot to him. You know how he is with Quidditch…"

"Being compared to a silly game isn't improving my mood," I scowled, snatching away his Charms homework from him and reviewing it sullenly. "I'm shocked at you, Remus. It's only a week into school an you're caring about work already?"

"It's not silly to him," Remus said softly, veiwing me with a calm patience that was not in the least soothing. I snorted; he sighed, almost defeatedly. "You know, I think it's ridiculous the way he goes after you myself. Why waste time – with the fawning and looking up of strong enough counter-charms – on something that's so meaningless as love?"

I snorted again. "It's not love; it's hormonal infatuation, and as soon as he would look past the good looks he repeatedly gushes over and would see the real me, the puppy-like adoration would drop like a dead weight."

Remus sat back, looking fully surprised and as though he had just realized something. "Why, your right! Without your flawless complexion, beautiful hair, and stunning eyes, you're a mean old shell with strident and undesireable characteristics replacing your soul! James must be alerted at once, it should be a snap getting him off you."

Flinging his work back at him and squashing myself low in my seat again, I grumbled, "I'm sure if you tried really hard, you could ruin my evening even further before you left."

"That's certainly not what I was aiming for; Sirius would be outraged to think I'd be stealing his job. " Remus leaned across the table and pinned me with his peircing amber stare for a full minute before he said, in an almost whisper, "The point I'm trying to make to you, Evans, is this: James isn't the most ambitious person in this world, yet he's been trying to convince you he sincerely cares about you for more than _six years. _He may not be going about it in the best way, but his best interests for you are at heart. He knew you were something spectacular upon first meeting you when he was eleven, back when he was free from all the hormones of puberty. And, not to be rude, but you weren't exactly the prettiest little carrot-top in our first year. James knew you were going to be the most gorgeous, smart, and out-going girl in our school even when you were trembling about being sorted, though. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to pull one of your pig-tails, but James saw _you,_ and he's been sick over you ever since then. I don't know how girls work or anything like that, but the few I've dated always gushed over being fantasized and romanced over by someone charming; I just wanted you to know that he may not be quite charming, but the rest is there, full and true."

Leaving me in an immovable slump, he got up and walked back over to his table by the fire. I – hollowly – watched him gather his things, turn, smile at me, and walk up to his dormitory. I stayed slumped, thinking hard about the monolouge that had been played to me and listening to the rain. I thought about it so long and so hard, my brain felt as though it were mirroring my body: numb, shapeless, and very tired. The fire had burnt nearly out and everyone had long since gone to bed when the portrait hole opened.

Sirius stumbled and dripped through first, yawning loudly and dragging his broom and gear behind him. James followed him, trying to wipe off his glasses on his saturated robes. Siruis said, "I'm tuckered; see you tomo-mo-mo-morrow, Prongs."

His yawing friend stumbled up the stairs with some difficulty, but James stumped over to the chair that had been previously occupied by Remus and fell into a position similar to mine, dropping his broom onto the floor to the left of him. He muttered aloud, "What's wrong with me, Evans?" At first, I thought he had seen me, but I soon executed he was talking to himself. His back was to me and he was speaking mournfully into the dying embers. "I don't even know why I adore you so; you're nearly as rude, abrasive, and insulting as _I _am. I thought opposites were supposed to attract, and yet I keep doing things that I know will annoy you to the point of insanity just to get you to notice me."

Already feeling quite cantankerous by his conversation with the crumbling log, I bristled and stood up, planning to march right over to the boy and slap him, but when he spoke again, I remained still to listen. "I guess Padfoot's right: it's not working. It's not worth it either. You've just come to hate me more and more, and Mooney told me how upset you are all the time. It's not what I intended, Lils, I just…like you _so much_."

I edged closer to his chair, my feet shuffling silently in the thick carpet.

"It hurts, if it makes you feel better to know, to know I've gone and made you unhappy. I'm just a boy and never realized it before. I know it now, but I just can't seem to stop. I'm scared, I guess; scared you'll stop looking at me, not that it's in a good way now anyways."

I was an arm's-length away from him, hidden from his veiw by the high back of the chair.

"I guess I really am a prat, then, you were right all along. I'd rather you hate me and fester about it then forget me. I just don't know _why._"

"Remus called it love." James lept clear off the chair and nearly fell from it. He whipped around so quickly a few droplets of water from his sopping hair splattered against my cheek. I wiped them off indifferently as he flushed crimson and stammered, "Lily! I had no – what did – wh –" My words sank in. "Remus what?"

I sighed and studied the rug pattern as I walked around to the right side of his chair and said, "Yes, the great bugger, and he said a load of other things that made me come to realize he's a lot smarter than he lets on." I turned my back to him and let the back of my knees collapse against the arm of the cushy seat. He flushed further as I fell back into his lap. I didn't take notice and played with a badge that was stitched onto the front of his Quidditch robes as I continued, "I suppose I'm at as much fault as you are."

Finding some brain cells that had not been fried in the shock I had given him, he asked, "Wh – what do you mean?"

I picked at a corner of the badge that James's less-than-adequate sewing job had been not enough to withhold the amount of pressure he put it under. "I never stopped to think about how you work. You're an idiot boy, as you said, and didn't stop to think about how _I_ work. It's a common factor in the selfish teenage world that will soon kill of our entire species. Some girls may like the ego that should give you trouble walking through doors and all the show-off antics you put on, but I don't."

"I've come to understand that, yes," he muttered. I could practically feel the heat radiating from his face and neck at the apparently awkward position I seemed to have put him.

"Good," I said, glad we had made that break-through so quickly. "Deflating your head a bit would be nothing that I'm opposed to, just so you know. I have been hard on you as well, though, and I'm apologizing now and letting you know that I'm comprehending at last the well-hidden feelings behind your actions the past six years."

I stopped and thought for a moment, shifting my position as I did. James opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, thought better of it, and gave a sort of strangled grunt instead. I pulled my legs over the edge of the armchair and curled them around me, ignoring the fact that I was becoming damp as I leaned my shoulder against James's chest. "You know, you can be sweet when you try. That Christmas present you gave me was incredibly thoughtful. How did you know I love Anthony Robbins?"

His mouth opened, but nothing but a few broken stammers were emmited. "Oh, well, it doesn't matter. It was a wonderful book. The collective works in it were fabulous." I pulled a stray blade of grass that had stuck to his robe collar off absently and flicked it away. "It's when you do things like that that I wonder what really makes you tick. How can someone so rude, abrasive, and insulting care enough to find things like that out about me?"

"You weren't supposed to hear that," he muttered, so low I almost couldn't understand him. "I didn't know you were there."

"Don't worry, I ment that as a compliment." He grunted as though he didn't take it as one. "Still, I'm irked that I don't see more of it; there are plenty more books I want to read." Almost reluctantly, he managed a small, flickering ghost of the smile that constantly was in companion to his daily appearance.

I smiled myself and said, "There it is." I raised my hand to finger it. It at once dissapeared and was substituted out for instantly filled cappilaries. I smirked viciously.

"Why such the change of character, James?" I asked sweetly, letting my hand fall and trail a ziz-zagging pattern down his front. "To hear you tell, you'd hop at every chance you could find to get me in such a position." I leaned down closer so that our noses were almost touching, my hair falling forward and creating a curly curtain a round us. "No cocky additude? No snide comment? Am I to assume the past six years have been an act, because you led me to believe this was your main intention. That's dissapointing, James. 'A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there is no action, you havn't truly decided.' Very dissapointing…"

I had been leaning slowly away as I was finishing my whispered quote, so I was caught entirly by surprise when James's hand shot out and pulled me back down, his lips making a solid connection with mine.

My senses exploded behind my closed eyes. This experience, like nothing else I had ever felt, breathed, or lived, seemed to bring up things in me that I hadn't even known I could feel. My very insides came to life. I moaned and dizzily groped for his hair andas my fingers brushed against his soft cheek, another wave of stars coursed through me. His hands, deeply interlocked in my hair, pulled me in closer. I was too weak to resist even if I had wanted to. Although it had probably only lasted 8 seconds, it seemed an eternity later that James released me from the bond with a groan of sweet agony. "Anthony Robbins," he gasped. "Chapter nineteen, page two-hundred and forty-six."

Still struggling for my own breath, I none-the-less managed to ask, "You read my book?…And memorized it?" I felt him nod, (I had not yet been able to summon adequate strength to open my eyelids,) and put his hand on the side of my face to pull me closer again.

"Page eighty-two…" he whispered, his warm, sweet breath tickling my eyelashes. I converted some of my still-raging emotions into energy sufficient enough to open my eyes a fraction of an inch, and could see him peering at me with a deep, firey intensity that made his hazle eyes burn and dance like I had never seen before. In a great, satisfactory sigh, he hissed, "…'Live with passion!'"

He pulled me in for another universe-changing kiss that, in the infinite time it lasted, I fully forgave him for every asinine or juvenile felony he may have committed against me for the time that I had known him. Anthony Robbins had never quoted a more sensible or wise thing. Passion indeed.

I felt as though I were fully drunk when we pulled apart. I did not – could not – object as James shifted out from under me and stood. He said softly, "Goodnight."

Good was an understatement.

He bent down, brushed his lips ever so gently in a butterfly kiss across my forehead, turned, and walked up the stairs to his dormitory.

Somewhere in the castle, a muted bell softly tolled the hour. I did not contain enough subordination to count the number of times its soft appeal was doled out. I licked my lips, almost unconsiously, and shivered with delight at the lingering taste of James still there. Somehow, I managed to drag myself up the staircase to my dormitory and collapse in my bed. Every last inch of me felt as though it were made out of nothing but jello. My dreams were filled with nothing but thoughts as sweet as the taste of the kiss that was long overdue and in sure prospect of being repeated.

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A/N: I like random fluff just as much as the next person; I figured it's my turn to give back what I've recived. It's nothing big or fancy, and not nearly as good as some of the wonderful stuff I've read, but it fixed up my short span of writer's block. I hope you enjoyed. I sure did. In fact, I won't even care if you don't review this. Have a nice day. 


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